#400

“To such a scholar, the art of grammar, for example, was not merely a mechanical disposition of the parts of speech. From late Hellenistic times through the Middle Ages, the study and practice of grammar included not only the 'skill of letters' mentioned by Plato and Aristotle; it included also, and this became very important, a study of poetry in its technical felicities, an exegesis of poetry both in form and substance, and nicety of style, insofar as that can be distinguished from rhetoric.”
“We must remember that the medieval conception of grammar was even more general than the late Hellenistic or Roman. Not only did it include the science of correct speech and the art of exegesis, it included as well the modern conceptions of analogy, etymology, methods of presentation, construction, the condition of poetic license and the exceptions to that condition--and even metaphorical language or figures of speech.”